Outdoors: Deer hunters asked to collect live ticks for Tufts study

Successful deer hunters can contribute significantly to science. Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine's Dr. Sam Telford, one of America's leading disease researchers, needs blood-engorged tick specimens from local whitetail deer.

Hunters can safely and easily pull them out with their fingers. They subsequently should place the lead-colored, raisin-sized ticks in a small pillbox or similar rigid-walled container, then in a baggie to store in the refrigerator. Telford needs them alive and labeled with the town they came from.

He is looking for both Lyme disease-causing deer ticks and moose-killing winter ticks. He'd like to map out where the little-known winter ticks occur in Worcester County and determine their number. From a very limited number of local specimens, he has found about 10 deer ticks for every one winter tick. Hunter contributions could provide a much more accurate assessment of our local winter tick population.

At Tufts, Telford will breed them for experiments, not test them for pathogens.

Telford normally gets enough ticks himself during hunting season from deer check-in stations. But this fall, tick numbers declined 50 percent, largely due to very dry conditions that have persisted since July.

Droughts kill ticks. That's good news for hunters and deer. In prior years, Telford personally has removed more than 2,000 tick larvae from a single local deer. Of course, deer also host substantial numbers of tick nymphs and adults. That can mean substantial blood loss.

During hunting season, we're usually bitten either by adult deer ticks or larval winter ticks. It's possible also now to be bitten by deer keds, little-known insects sometimes called sheep ticks. They're not ticks at all but rather wingless flies that rapidly scurry through deer hair, unlike true ticks, which move very slowly.

Winter ticks differ from other ticks, having only one host. All three of their metamorphic stages feed on a single deer or moose. The other tick species initially rely mostly on mice, later attaching to deer to complete their life cycle. Distinctively, the winter tick larvae and nymphs do not drop off once they have their first blood meal, but instead remain in the hair of the moose or deer, where they mature. Only adult pregnant females drop off to lay their eggs on the ground.

Although posing no health risk to us, winter ticks are a nuisance in the fall to anyone who steps into a pile of newly hatched larvae while walking over plant debris, where they hide. Some may attach and cause a painful bite.

That bite is much different from the near-anesthetic attachment of deer and dog ticks. Nova Scotia Indians named them "Bite Like Fire."

Winter ticks' recent increase is devastating moose, which they latch onto in thick brush. There, totally incapable of ridding themselves of the winter ticks, moose lose large quantities of blood to them throughout the winter.

According to Telford, an adult tick sucks about 1 to 1½ milliliters of blood during each meal. Just 10 of them can result in the loss of a tablespoon and a half of blood each week. Low levels of infestation are no problem.

But winter ticks, where prey populations are very high, can work like battalions of vampires converging in overwhelming numbers. Tens of thousands of them may suck blood from just one moose. Their incessant attack is highly stressful, gradually weakening and killing moose, which constantly expend energy trying to scratch. Their pathetic efforts result only in harmful hair loss. The persecution relentlessly continues through late spring.

Winter ticks always existed up north, but their populations were normally controlled by very cold winters and snowpacks. New England winters have become significantly milder, a condition very favorable to ticks. In addition, denser populations of moose mean more available blood and denser populations of winter ticks. In Massachusetts, we've similarly seen that denser populations of deer lead to denser populations of Lyme disease-causing deer ticks.

One tick can produce more than 3,000 offspring. With so many parasites, moose are dying of anemia, infection, stress and starvation. Their death is brutally slow and agonizing.

Maine, still having cold winters, has been so far an exception. Its herd actually has increased to about 75,000. But that bears watching.

Massachusetts moose are on the extreme southern end of their range. If their density increases substantially and winter tick numbers explode correspondingly, we may see a similar problem here. In so many ways, we'd be far better off with the naturally colder winters of times gone by.